John Boynehttp://johnboyne.com
Irish AuthorSat, 17 Mar 2018 14:22:16 +0000en-GBhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.13http://johnboyne.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/cropped-favicon1-32x32.pngJohn Boynehttp://johnboyne.com
3232UEA Creative Writing Scholarshiphttp://johnboyne.com/creative-writing-scholarship/
http://johnboyne.com/creative-writing-scholarship/#respondSat, 24 Oct 2015 15:37:22 +0000http://johnboyne.com/?p=936In 2015, I set up the John Boyne Scholarship for Irish students undertaking the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. I was a student on the MA in 1994/95 – when I could barely afford to

In 2015, I set up the John Boyne Scholarship for Irish students undertaking the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.

I was a student on the MA in 1994/95 – when I could barely afford to feed myself – and then I returned as Writing Fellow during 2004/05. I also taught on the MA programme during 2014/15.

Here’s the rules:

One scholarship of £5,000 towards tuition fees or maintenance will be awarded to a student enrolled on the MA Creative Writing Prose Fiction. The Scholarship is open students ordinarily resident in the Republic of Ireland and who demonstrate a genuine financial need. All eligible applications must be received by 1 May 2016 to be eligible for consideration for funding.

The recipient of the 2015/16 Scholarship was David Lynch.

The recipient of the 2016/17 Scholarship was Fearghal Hall.

The recipient of the 2017/18 Scholarship is Jill Crawford.

More details about the scholarship and how to apply may be found here at the UEA Website.

]]>http://johnboyne.com/creative-writing-scholarship/feed/0Irish Book Awardshttp://johnboyne.com/irish-book-awards/
http://johnboyne.com/irish-book-awards/#respondSat, 24 Oct 2015 15:37:22 +0000http://johnboyne.com/?p=934The Irish Book Awards Are Tonight Heading out to the Irish Book Awards tonight in the Doubletree Hotel, Dublin. It’s the 10th Anniversary of the book awards. I’ve won 3 times in the past, for Children’s Book of the Year

Heading out to the Irish Book Awards tonight in the Doubletree Hotel, Dublin. It’s the 10th Anniversary of the book awards. I’ve won 3 times in the past, for Children’s Book of the Year 2007 (The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas), Radio 1 Book of the Year 2007 (The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas) and Short Story of the Year 2014 (Rest Day).

]]>http://johnboyne.com/irish-book-awards/feed/0Top 10 Young Narratorshttp://johnboyne.com/why-reading-is-essential-to-the-creative-growth-of-our-childrens-imaginations-2/
http://johnboyne.com/why-reading-is-essential-to-the-creative-growth-of-our-childrens-imaginations-2/#respondSat, 24 Oct 2015 15:37:21 +0000http://johnboyne.com/?p=938Top Ten Young Narrators Here’s a piece I wrote for The Guardian a while back. The appeal of writing through the voice of a young narrator is one that attracts most writers from time to time even if, for the

The appeal of writing through the voice of a young narrator is one that attracts most writers from time to time even if, for the most part, a lot of adult novelists are intimidated by the idea of writing a novel aimed at young people. We create characters that are pure inventions – people we’ve never known, doing things we’ve never done, in places we’ve never been – but we’ve all been young and we all know how it feels to look at the world and try to understand its conventions even when they seem incomprehensible or inconsistent to us. This is one of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed novels with a youthful protagonist; more often than not they’re optimistic, good-willed, resourceful young people forced to live through an adult experience and through their occasionally naïve voices we get to re-live a familiar experience in an unexpected way. The ten novels presented here, with narrators aged from birth to 17, are some of my favourites.

1 – Charles Dickens David Copperfield (1850)

From the opening line, where David queries whether he will be the hero of his own life or whether that station will be held by someone else, the reader shares the heartaches, loneliness and occasional triumphs of Dickens’ favourite creation. The early chapters – his love for his mother, Clara, the abusive relationship with his stepfather, Edward Murdstone, and his eventual sanctuary in the home of his great-aunt Betsey – are unparalleled in their presentation of the cruelties that can shape a child’s life and the relief of eventual asylum.

2 – Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (1883)

When I was a boy, I re-read Treasure Island countless times and longed to experience such adventure. Jim Hawkins’ narrative of life at sea in search of treasure alongside Long John Silver contains all the excitement that a novel like this requires: mutinies, horrible deaths, pirates, betrayals, but it’s Jim’s voice – brave and heroic while never arrogant – that keeps the whole thing flowing along.

3 – LP Hartley The Go-Between (1953)

My favourite novel of all. Although the narrative voice is that of sixty year-old Leo Colston, it’s his memories of his thirteenth summer that dominate the story. Staying with his much wealthier friend, Marcus Maudsley, in Norfolk, Leo falls in love with Marcus’ older sister Marian who uses him as a ‘go-between’ to deliver letters back and forth to her farmer lover Ted Burgess. The sense of deepening obsession and Leo’s catastrophic sexual awakening towards the end of the book leave the reader with a devastating sense of innocence corrupted.

4 – Edmund White A Boy’s Own Story (1982)

It’s impossible to state the importance of this novel in the sexual awakening of several generations of young gay boys since its publication more than forty years ago. The unbalanced feelings between the two young lovers, one slightly disinterested, the other falling deeper in lust and love, are familiar emotions for all of us, gay or straight. The universal sentiment makes this a book that should be required reading in schools that want to counter homophobia and embrace difference. Small chance of that happening.

5 – Ian McEwan The Cement Garden (1978)

My first introduction to McEwan as a teenager was through the voice of Jack, the sixteen year-old narrator who tries to keep his siblings together after the death of their mother by burying her corpse in the basement and pretending that nothing in life has changed. The unsettling relationship between Jack and his sister, Julie, along with his jealousy of his sister’s boyfriend make for a macabre but unforgettable tale.

6 – Roddy Doyle Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993)

Ten year-old Paddy Clarke is one of the great creations of contemporary literature. Full of exuberance and passion, certain about what and who he likes and what and who he doesn’t like, Paddy’s story takes him from the mischief of his carefree days to the trauma of watching the breakdown of his parents’ marriage. We’re on his side throughout though, and Doyle’s use of colloquial language and quick snapshots of life in Barrytown combine to produce a vivid and unforgettable characterisation.

7 – Rose Tremain The Way I Found Her (1997)

A wonderful novel featuring a thirteen-year-old narrator who spends a summer in Paris with his mother. As his sexual development begins he develops feelings for a novelist, Valentina, whose own life is filled with mystery and secrets. Lewis’ growing desire and the novel’s unexpected climax make this one of Tremain’s best books but it’s the voice of the boy that carries the reader along. Nervous, tentative and slightly afraid of his movement away from childhood, his anxieties are all too familiar.

8 – David Mitchell Black Swan Green (2006)

My favourite of Mitchell’s novels lacks the astonishing movements through time and place that characterize his work, but this story of thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, a stammerer, during the summer of the Falklands War is his most emotional and heartfelt book. Mitchell has recounted how some of his character’s experiences mirror his own, which adds an intriguing autobiographical element to the narrative, and for those looking forward to September’s The Bone Clocks, there’s a nice connection between the two novels with a sort-of-shared character.

9 – Kevin Brooks The Bunker Diary (2013)

Brooks’ controversial Carnegie-winning masterpiece features Linus, a sixteen year-old kidnap victim held underground along with five others by a mysterious captor. Forget all the naysayers and the must-we-throw-this-filth-at-our-kids merchants, The Bunker Diary features one of the most heroic and strong-willed young people in contemporary literature, the type of decent-minded, considerate sixteen year-old we all wish we could have been. The ill-informed knee-jerk criticism aimed at this novel has been tediously predictable but thankfully it has simply earned the novel more readers.

10 – Rob Doyle Here Are The Young Men (2014)

A brand new novel, published by Ireland’s Lilliput Press in 2014, Doyle’s debut is a scorching account of the first summer after school for four seventeen year olds, drinking, screwing around, travelling and – in one case – completely losing his mind. The language is unflinching, the story uncompromising, but the reader feels an affinity to a narrator who watches his friends descent while trying to keep control of his own life. This is what it’s like to be an Irish teen today and Doyle never tries to ingratiate himself with the reader through cheap laughs, making this a powerful and provocative novel and easily the most honest account of young Irish people for many years.

]]>http://johnboyne.com/why-reading-is-essential-to-the-creative-growth-of-our-childrens-imaginations-2/feed/0Friendships in YA Fictionhttp://johnboyne.com/book-title-brainstorming-on-a-napkin-and-how-to-create-killer-intors/
Tue, 20 Oct 2015 12:51:26 +0000http://johnboyne.com/?p=94Here’s a piece I wrote for the Guardian recently on top 10 friendships in Young Adult fiction. Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Book (1894) Unlikely friendships between humans and animals are staples of both children’s literature and cinema. Kipling’s

]]>Here’s a piece I wrote for the Guardian recently on top 10 friendships in Young Adult fiction.

Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Book (1894)

Unlikely friendships between humans and animals are staples of both children’s literature and cinema. Kipling’s tale of a child, Mowgli, growing up in the jungle alongside Baloo the Bear and Bagheera the Panther while taking care to avoid the attentions of the tiger Shere Khan – because he might, you know, eat him – presents this as an entirely natural state of affairs. The stories are fables, the animals offering moral lessons, particularly in the three stories featuring the ‘man-cub’ himself. Adapted so often and into so many different shapes, it’s best to go back to the source, to the jungle, and read it as Kipling intended.

AA Milne – The House At Pooh Corner (1928)

No childhood would be complete without a little time spent in Ashdown Forest alongside Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger and Roo. Pooh, of course, has no brain (according to his friends) but I daresay we’ve all had this accusation flung at us from time to time, which makes it so easy to relate to him. The little bear remains at the centre of all his friends’ activities, usually through his misdeeds, but the manner in which each looks out for the other is as charming as it is believable. Unusually for a book of this sort, there are no villains, no one trying to upset the status quo of the forest, just lots of fun and games and to read them again, as an adult, is to lose oneself in an almost unbearable level of nostalgia.

John Steinbeck – Of Mice And Men (1937)

Not strictly speaking a children’s book but as many of us read it as part of a school curriculum it seems to recall that time vividly, almost reeking of school dinners, puberty and unprovoked beatings. George and Lennie’s intellectual and physically variances suggest they might form an unlikely alliance and yet they see a shared future together in the acquisition of that great aspiration of the migrant worker, land. The small protects the big here, the weak protects the strong. The story’s resolution manages to combine an act of violence with one of great compassion.

E.B. White – Charlotte’s Web (1952)

Who’s to say that pigs and spiders can’t be friends? There’s something magical about even the concept of this novel, a spider, Charlotte, spinning words of support in her web for her friend Wilbur, when it looks like the latter is about to be turned into sausages. Charming and funny, White plays with other concepts of friendships between humans and animals in his earlier novel Stuart Little. It goes without saying that David Cameron, a noted admirer or the porcine breed, keeps this on his bedside table at no.10.

Michelle Magorian – Goodnight Mister Tom (1981)

There’s an unwritten rule in children’s literature that friendships between old and young people are boring, sentimental and that kids just don’t want to read them. Magorian’s classic novel puts a lie to this theory in her story of Willie Beech, both physically and mentally scarred by his violent mother, as he is evacuated to the home of Tom Oakley during the Second World War. Delving into issues of religion and anti-Semitism, the effect that the two central characters have on each other is what prevents this from being simply a ‘wise old man educating an innocent child’ story.

Roald Dahl – The BFG (1982)

Despite being one of the most beloved children’s writers ever, it always felt like a rebellious act to read a Roald Dahl book, considering how dark and unconventional their storylines could be, particularly with regard to the author’s treatment of parents. (Like Dickens, “Who needs ‘em?” might have been his mantra.) Not that there are any here, of course, as Sophie is an orphan brought to Giant Country by the Big Friendly Giant and, while there, has to evade the child-eating tendencies of the other giants. Hats off to Queen Elizabeth II, who plays a central role in marshalling her troops to sort out the bad guys. Can that woman do nothing wrong?

Oliver Jeffers – Lost and Found (2005)

It’s hard to think of a writer who manages to encapsulate heartfelt emotion in so few words while never sinking into sentimentality as easily as Oliver Jeffers. In his wonderful picture books, kindness, humanity and friendship are always on display, along with more than a little cheerful eccentricity, and never more so than in this tale of a little boy who finds an unhappy penguin on his front door and decides to row him back to the South Pole. Penguins abound through Jeffers’ work. And yet he’s published by HarperCollins. Go figure, as our American cousins would say.

Dave Shelton – A Boy And A Bear And A Boat (2012)

Shelton’s profound and hugely entertaining tale of a boy and a bear sailing nowhere in particular is full of wonderful jokes and sarcastic asides, not to mention illustrations that you end up staring at for ridiculously long periods of time. We don’t know why the boy is running away, we don’t know why the bear is rowing a boat. And yet it all feels entirely rational and important and that if the boy didn’t have the bear to speak to, then he would have no one. From such simple needs, great friendships are made.

Kevin Brooks – The Bunker Diary (2013)

My own favourite YA book of the 21st century, this extraordinary tale of resilience in the face of inexplicable cruelty makes a hero of the young protagonist – Linus Weems – while the adults trapped alongside him in an underground bunker display varying degrees of violence and selfishness. The friendship that Linus forms with Russell, the oldest inmate, avoids any type of Morgan Freeman-type voiceover and is an essential and ultimately tragic part of the story. Ignore the why-must-we-throw-this-filth-at-our-kids brigade; this is contemporary literature at its finest.

Tristan Bancks – Two Wolves (2014)

It’s more unusual than you might think for siblings to be friends in YA books – they’re usually at each others’ throats – so the bond between Ben Silver and younger sister Olive in Australian writer Bancks’ novel of escape and parental misdeeds is a welcome respite for that alone. But this is also a tale of morality and personal responsibility, of looking after yourself while taking care of the person you love the most. With writing tighter than a bowman’s string, Two Wolves echoes the classic wilderness fiction of Jack London, revealing Bancks, a heroic champion of children’s literature Down Under, as a great 21st century storyteller.

]]>Wartime Storieshttp://johnboyne.com/ten-steps-to-publishing-a-short-story/
http://johnboyne.com/ten-steps-to-publishing-a-short-story/#respondTue, 20 Oct 2015 12:50:18 +0000http://johnboyne.com/?p=92Here’s a piece I wrote for the Waterstone’s site about war fiction. In some recent publicity material for my new young adult novel THE BOY AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN, my UK publishers described me as ‘the voice

In some recent publicity material for my new young adult novel THE BOY AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN, my UK publishers described me as ‘the voice of wartime childhood’. While I don’t think I’ve quite earned that title yet, and certainly have a long way to go before I make as significant a mark in the field as Michael Morpurgo, it was a description that both gratified and startled me in equal measure.

I’ve been publishing novels for both adults and young people for more than fifteen years and it surprises me that I’ve devoted so much of my creative energy to war, which was not a subject I expected to write about when I was younger. (It wasn’t even a subject that I read very much about.) And yet it’s there throughout my First World War novel THE ABSOLUTIST and its companion story for younger readers STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND THEN LEAVE, and of course it’s at the heart of my two Second World War novels, THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS and THE BOY AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN, not to mention several short stories along the way too. The role of children in wartime and the effect that it has on them is something that fascinates me. A large part of our success or failure in life as adults depends on the happiness and security that we experience as children and to be thrust into such terrible experiences at a young age surely has a malignant effect on even the toughest souls.

For the most part I keep my young protagonists away from the action itself as they try to understand what is going on and what the adults won’t explain to them through a combination of resourcefulness and observation. In THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS, Bruno slowly gains an understanding of the horrors of the death camps through his conversations with Shmuel, the Jewish inmate on the other side of the fence. In STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND THEN LEAVE, Alfie Summerfield shines shoes at King’s Cross Station and in doing so hears the excitement of young soldiers as they make their war to Northern France for the first time and the stories of those traumatised souls who have just returned. And in THE BOY AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN, I wanted to examine the idea of brainwashing, of how easy it is to be swept up in something bigger than oneself and lose one’s sense of right and wrong through a desire to belong and to be accepted.

It’s a subject I touched on a little in THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS, when Bruno’s sister Gretel abandons her dolls to follow the journey of the German armies across Europe for no other reason than her crush on the handsome young Lt Kotler. But in the new book, it’s the dominant theme and I finally allow one of my protagonists, Pierrot, to show a dark side to his otherwise jovial character. The question is often asked as to how the German nation allowed itself to get so swept up and overwhelmed by Adolf Hitler. We look back now and insist that we would never have become so brainwashed, but can we really be sure of that? Pierrot, an orphan who goes to live with his aunt in Hitler’s Berghof retreat, begins the novel as a cheerful and good-hearted little boy but his need for a father figure, his desperation to belong to something bigger than himself and his gradual realisation that he would prefer to be the bully than the bullied is what allows him to be so easily corrupted. The question as to whether readers will still feel sympathy for him when he engages in some terrible acts is one that remains to be answered but I was rooting for him throughout, even while allowing him to do some heinous things.

I feel there are a lot more war stories left in me yet and it’s a subject that will almost certainly feature in future novels for both adults and young people. And maybe one day, through my writing, I’ll be able to understand it better.

]]>http://johnboyne.com/ten-steps-to-publishing-a-short-story/feed/0Sinéad & Ihttp://johnboyne.com/why-reading-is-essential-to-the-creative-growth-of-our-childrens-imaginations/
Tue, 20 Oct 2015 12:49:09 +0000http://johnboyne.com/?p=82Here’s a piece I wrote about Sinéad O’Connor for The Irish Times a couple of years ago that got quite a lot of attention… SINÉAD AND I At last November’s Irish Book Awards, sometime between the

Here’s a piece I wrote about Sinéad O’Connor for The Irish Times a couple of years ago that got quite a lot of attention…

SINÉAD AND I

At last November’s Irish Book Awards, sometime between the starter and the main course, I glanced across the room and my eyes landed on the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life. I say this as someone who hasn’t found myself attracted to the female form since around 1991 and even then the girl I fancied turned out, on closer inspection, to be Chesney Hawkes. But this woman was something else. People were on their feet, mingling, and so I made my way across, brushing Booker Prize-winners away with my left hand while fending off air-kissing chick-lit authors with my right. I felt like I was back at a school disco, only instead of being an anxious kid liquered up on cider, I was a grown man wearing a tuxedo, a tie-clip, a pocket square and holding a glass of champagne. Classy.

She turned as I approached her and our eyes met. Perhaps she recognized the determined look on my face because she glanced left and right nervously, looking for a getaway. If she walks away, I told myself, I’ll follow her. If she runs, I’ll leap over the tables. I’ll rugby tackle her to the ground if I have to. (I didn’t go to Terenure College just for the beatings.) I’d waited a lifetime for this moment and she wasn’t getting away from me without a fight.

‘Hello,’ I said, uncertain whether or not I should reach for her hand or simply throw my arms around her and hug her tighter than a tube top on a majorette. ‘I just wanted to say – ’

‘Hi,’ she said, interrupting me and managing to turn one syllable into something commanding with her husky Glenageary voice. She was looking at me with a challenge on her face. Fine, you’ve got me, that expression was saying. I can’t escape. So either say something interesting or fuck off.

‘Yes,’ I said, nodding as if I was in full agreement with her. ‘Absolutely. I just wanted to tell you that I’m a huge fan.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, unimpressed. In fairness, this was a literary awards ceremony. She might have hoped for something a little more original than that.

‘No, I really am,’ I insisted, as if she’d accused me of lying.

‘Yeah, thank you.’

I was struggling now. Actually, it was exactly like being back at the school disco. I searched my brain for something intelligent to say. ‘I’m friends with your brother,’ was what I came up with. I’d probably used that line on some lucky Our Lady’s girl back in the day too.

‘Which one?’ she asked.

‘Which what?’

‘Which brother?’

I thought about it. I didn’t know she had more than one.

‘Joe,’ I said.

‘Ok,’ she said, shrugging a little.

To her left, a red-haired man appeared and stood next to her protectively. I recognized the poor unfortunate creature as a social diarist; I’d seen his picture in the papers standing next to the type of person you see on Celebrity Apprentice. He must have overheard my pathetic attempts at conversation because he was staring at me with withering contempt and was this close to telling me to go back to my table, wait for my meal to arrive and prepare to lose to Derek freakin’ Landy (again). My heart sank. When that guy looks at you like you’re worthless, you know the gig is up.

‘Alrighty,’ I said, like a character from Fargo, offering something between a bow and a curtsey. ‘It was great to meet you.’

‘Thanks,’ she said.

I wandered back to my table with all the grace of Mel Gibson at chucking-out time. I put my head in my hands. I ate some chicken. I lost to Derek Landy (again). And then I got royally drunk and tried to put my humiliation behind me.

*

I’m not usually intimidated by famous people. I’ve met a few over the years and for the most part, I can take them or leave them. They’re great for an old Facebook picture but let’s face it, you don’t really want to get stuck in conversation for too long with David Beckham or some girl who made it to Judges’ Houses on The X-Factor in 2007. (And for what it’s worth, using “I’m wearing your underwear” as an opening gambit to Beckham comes across as creepy rather than amusing.) But I hold my hands up. I was intimidated by Sinéad O’Connor. I’d never met her before but I’d been half in love with her for a large portion of my life. If I was going to make a fool of myself in front of anyone, it might as well be her.

My first introduction to Sinéad was watching her perform Mandinka on Top of the Pops when I was around fifteen. Gary Davies, wearing a snazzy brown sports coat that hung down below his knees was pointing towards the stage where a young woman was standing in front of clouds of smoke, thrusting her hips back and forth in time to the music. She stared out at the audience with an uninterested expression on her face, for this was the era of lip-synching and it was obvious that here was a girl who had no interest in faking anything. I sat there, mesmerized, and stopped playing with my Spirograph for the length of the song. Mandinka. To this day, I still have no clue what that even means. I could probably look it up and find out but I don’t want to. I like not knowing.

And then there was her most distinguishing feature. While Carol Decker had a head full of red curls that required their own postcode and Whitney Houston could barely dance with anybody who loved her under the weight of her hair extensions, Sinéad had shaved her barnet completely, thus depriving herself of what might have been a lucrative L’Oréal advertising campaign. Fuck my hair, she was telling the world. Just listen to my song. Lesser women than her have put me in my place over the years – I sat next to a Nobel Laureate once at a function who instantly told me to find somewhere else to sit and I nearly wet myself – so I did what she said.

*

That was early 1988. It would be two more years before the real breakthrough came with Nothing Compares 2 U. Apparently, Prince wrote it. No one cares. It’s a Sinéad O’Connor song. The song, the performance and the video are the stuff of legend; almost a quarter century of telling us that she can eat her dinner in a fancy restaurant and it’s still as powerful as ever. There’s a video on YouTube of Sinéad performing the song on a soapbox on Grafton Street on Christmas Eve and look at her, she still loves it, she still sings the shit out of it, and she still means every single word that comes out of her mouth. That’s the thing about Sinéad. In music, in life, she never says anything she doesn’t mean. But given the choice, she’d probably rather set it all to music.

The number one before Nothing Compares 2 U was Kylie’s Tears On My Pillow. And after, it was Dub Be Good To Me by Beats International. I’m just saying. February 1990 was a good time to turn the radio on. January and March? Not so much.

Part of Sinéad’s mystique has come from how we’ve watched her live her life in public, succeeding, struggling, falling apart, pulling herself back together, putting on a clerical collar and then taking it off again. She’s come out fighting, she’s gone down weeping, but she’s never given in. She ripped the Pope’s picture in half on television and now that we know all the things that he knew and did nothing about, it feels like a pity that she only had a photograph before her and not the man himself. She’s called out Bono on his pomposity and Miley Cyrus on her stupidity and whenever it seems that her life is turning into a national soap opera she comes back with the only thing that really matters: an album. A great album.

And that magical, incredible, gift of a voice.

I wonder whether people appreciate the magnitude of her recording career. She burned bright with I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got; it made her famous. She won a Grammy, although, incredibly, not for Nothing Compares 2 U; in fact she lost her three nominations for that song to Mariah Carey, Phil Collins and Paula Abdul. Yeah, I know. It sounds like a joke but there’s no punch line. She recorded a covers album because she wanted to sing a little Hart & Rogers, some Sammy Fain, some Andrew Lloyd Webber. She wanted to sing them so basically, fuck you world, that’s what she did.

Universal Mother opened with the dulcet tones of Germaine Greer and sexual politics back at the fore. I’m not no red football to be kicked around the garden, she sings. I’m a red Christmas-tree ball. And I’m fragile. Is there a word that more encompasses how we see Sinéad than fragile? Who is she anyway? She’s a mystery. A bit like the Queen, in that she seems to have been part of our lives forever but we still don’t really know who she is or what makes her tick. Although Sinéad is a lot more interesting than Elizabeth. And I bet she’s a lot better in the sack too.

More great songs followed, more great albums. Listen to No Man’s Woman on Faith And Courage; listen to how she sings that she hasn’t travelled this far to answer to anyone but herself. Listen to Daddy I’m Fine; listen to the love and the anger and the way she pulls it all together in the final four words of the song, the most honest statement a child can make to a parent, no matter how conflicted the feelings. Listen to ‘Til I Whisper You Something and wonder how a sentiment so apparently simple – ‘You take my rainy days and make them go away’ – can prove so profound when delivered with such sincerity. Listen to any one of her songs and tell me that you aren’t overwhelmed by the extraordinary juxtaposition of fury, serenity and overwhelming love. And then there’s still what is, for me, her greatest achievement, her 2012 album How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?, an album filled with blistering accounts of love lost, love found and – in the case of the magnificent Old Lady – love that’s still to come.

A great singer of other peoples’ songs too, she can add a twist to a familiar piece and makes you think of it in a whole new way. Have you heard her sing Elton John’s Sacrifice? Or I Don’t Know How To Love Him, from Jesus Christ Superstar? John Grant’s Queen of Denmark? Gabriel Yared’s Lullaby For Cain, used in the opening scene of The Talented Mr Ripley? ‘If you ever make a film,’ that movie’s director, Anthony Minghella, told me once, ‘grab your audience from the opening titles. A voice like that will capture them and never let them go.’

Ok, I’ll stop. Clearly she can do no wrong in my eyes. I don’t care if she ordains herself a priest, puts personal ads in newspapers, looks at Gay Byrne like she wants him to adopt her, gets into Twitter wars, covers herself with tattoos, piles on the pounds or works every one of them off again. She’s the greatest vocalist this country has ever produced and one of the best songwriters. She’s part of our national story, a vulnerable, troubled, talented, loving, angry, peaceful, complicated singer. I’m not interested in her personal life, her relationships, who she chooses to marry. I just want her to be happy. Someone who’s given the world so much deserves a little happiness. And to keep making great records.

I might have embarrassed myself in my one encounter with her at the Irish Book Awards but I don’t care. For a couple of minutes in November 2013, I stood in front of a singular artist, told her that I was a fan, and despite my humiliation, that alone made up for losing to Derek Landy.